The Ultimate IDE for Creating Cross-Platform, Natively Compiled Apps.

Delphi Frequently Asked Questions

Delphi is the most powerful Object Pascal IDE and component library for cross-platform Native App Development with flexible Cloud services and broad IoT connectivity. . It provides powerful VCL controls for Windows 10 and enables FMX development for Windows, Mac and Mobile. Delphi is your choice for ultra-fast Enterprise Strong Development™. Enhancements include double the available memory for large projects, extended multi-monitor support, improved Object Inspector, and much more. Delphi is 5x faster for development and deployment across multiple desktop, mobile, cloud, and database platforms including 32-bit and 64-bit Windows 10.

Delphi includes a comprehensive set of additional tools to help you do more than ever before. These are generally special editions of the tools created to be bundled with Delphi and the feature sets may differ from the full commercial versions.

FastReport VCL RAD edition and FastReport FireMonkey Embarcadero Edition from Fast Reports so you can quickly design and generate reports

The purchase of Update Subscription is mandatory at the time you purchase your Delphi product or upgrade. The Update Subscription agreement gives you a year of upgrades (including major and minor upgrades) and a specified number of support incidents. See the Update Subscription page for more detail.

Updates and additional software for Delphi users are available on the registered users download page at http://cc.embarcadero.com/reg/delphi. Notifications for those upgrades are delivered via email and the upgrades can be downloaded via the Maintenance Portal web site by following the instructions in the email.

Your earlier version license, and the version you upgrade to, are considered one named user license that covers both versions. If you already own an earlier version and go to the web page and request the same version license, you will just get a re-send of your existing serial number.

The earlier versions are available in English, French, German and Japanese. For versions 2007 and later, there is a single download and you choose the language at install time. For version 7, there is a separate download for each localized version.

The Academic edition can be used only for learning in an academic or classroom environment. Educational institutions cannot use the academic version to produce software for use within their institution to commercial licenses.

It could be a little confusing for some customers when they purchase Delphi and receive seven different serial numbers and download links. We tried to keep it simple by just delivering the license for the purchased version and allow you to request the other licenses as needed.

Yes. When you first run the product, a small application will open and ask you to register the product. Once that is done, and your product key is validated, then your product will be registered and installed.

InterBase 2017 Developer Edition is InterBase 2017 Server licensed for up to 20 users (80 database connections). The InterBase software is automatically installed with a default install of Delphi and licensed with your Delphi serial number. An InterBase ToGo Test Deployment license is also included in your Delphi license. You can deploy InterBase ToGo for testing purposes using the ToGo Test Deployment serial number included as part of your Delphi order delivery email. This is not available for AppWave Network license users.

When you're ready to deploy applications using InterBase, Embarcadero offers a variety of editions (Desktop, Server and To-Go) and a variety of licensing options (flexible server licensing, multi-packs and OEM licensing). Contact Embarcadero Sales or partners for more information. See the license terms in the Delphi license.rtf file for additional licensing details.

Mobile development features are also included in all editions of Embarcadero RAD Studio.

DataSnap Mobile Connectors are available in Enterprise edition and above.

When developing for iOS, you will also need a Mac computer for development and running in the simulator. You will need an Apple Developer account to test and deploy to iOS devices. Additional details are available in the online and product documentation.

FireDAC is included as part of the install. Features vary by edition with local/embedded database connectivity to select databases in Professional edition and local/embedded plus enterprise database connectivity in Enterprise edition or higher. More information is available at http://www.embarcadero.com/products/rad-studio/firedac.

The DataSnap Mobile Connector feature generates connectivity code that you can incorporate into mobile applications for iOS, Android, Blackberry and Windows Phone 7. You develop your mobile applications using the standard development tools and languages for each platform such as Objective C with the Xcode IDE for iOS, Java for Android and Blackberry, or Silverlight for Windows Phone 7. You then use the DataSnap Mobile Connector code to provide connectivity to your native C++Builder or Delphi DataSnap server.

Because of the use of Unicode as the default string type, Windows 98, 95, and ME will not run applications produced with Delphi 2009 or later. These operating systems do not support Unicode strings, and Microsoft has dropped support for them.

Applications built with Delphi 2009-XE2 and VCL will run on Windows 2000 or later. Applications built with Delphi XE3-XE5 will run on Windows XP and later. Applications built with Delphi versions from XE6 onwards will run on Windows 7 or later.

You can use an online service like MacinCloud to run OS X apps that you create with Delphi and you can use MacinCloud to test your iOS apps in the simulator. Access to a physical Mac machine is required for on-device testing.

Most existing code will work fine using the new default UnicodeString. Code that does byte level manipulation of string data, or that carries data in string variables probably needs to be examined and perhaps updated to account for the new character sizes inherent in Unicode string data. For more information, see the documentation and Embarcadero Developer Network for information about moving existing code to Unicode.

Yes, you should be able to do so, depending on the installed components required by your projects. Delphi uses the MSBuild system for the build engine, and thus requires a new project file if you are upgrading from version 2007 or earlier. However, the IDE will seamlessly update your projects to the new format.

The ER/Studio Developer Edition data modeling and visualization in Delphi Architect is a subset of the full ER/Studio. Delphi Architect doesn't include metadata import/export capabilities or access to ER/Studio team repository servers. It includes limited reporting functionality (HTML only). The ER/Studio functionality in Delphi Architect supports a specific set of databases in line with those supported by dbExpress, while the full ER/Studio products offer flexible configurations for those databases and more.